Making Jewish Books in North Africa, 1700-1900

Abstract

Books can be many things, in addition to vehicles for text: they can also be artisanal crafts, commercial merchandise, family heirlooms, illicit contraband, religious relics, and more. Beyond their status as objects, books are also nodes in a social network, part of a complex cultural system that connects people, objects, places, and ideas. This dissertation presents the Jewish book itself as a vital source for Jewish history, showing that the study of Jewish books, and their makers and readers, has the potential to reshape our understanding of Jewish society during the complex and turbulent transition into modernity. Drawing on contemporary scholarship in book history, and the emerging subfield of Jewish book history, I propose a methodology that combines bibliography, material culture, textual interpretation, and social history. In this dissertation, I argue that Jewish books must be studied as both material and social objects, paying attention to how they were brought into being, how they took their particular physical and visual forms, and how they were woven into the everyday lives of individuals and communities. I focus on how North African Jews were involved in the making of books in both manuscript and print, both in North Africa and abroad, demonstrating that book-making was a primary link between Jewish communities in North Africa and their coreligionists in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Examining the material and social aspects of the production of North African Jewish books in the 18th and 19th centuries, I highlight how the Jewish book illuminates the encounter between the world of a text and the world of its readers.